Quote Originally Posted by vox05
Quote Originally Posted by scotcher
For all its problems, I still think for a complete beginner 'zna-yet-ye' is the most useful (or least potentially misleading) approximation of the pronunciation.
I disagree. Even a beginner should not be bound to the patterns of his native language 'for the sake of simplicity',
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That's not what we're saying. Obviously, a beginner should try to pronounce the words as closely as possible to native speech, however, the vast majority won't be able to, so it's a question of managing the deficiency for the sake of being understood. Recommending that a beginner articulate the individual sounds of a word in a way that might sound unnatural to native speakers is sometimes the quickest and best way of teaching that student to speak intelligibly.

It's a little funny when the native speakers are debating over whether it should be 'zna-it-i' or 'zna-it-e', when the typical beginner is going to pronounce either one as знайты.